McKenzie interchange wrong on many counts

Re: “Night work driving families crazy,” Nov. 19.

The Ministry of Transportation is so badly wrong in so many ways on the McKenzie interchange project that a public inquiry is warranted.

First, and worst, as the front-page article in Sunday’s paper so clearly shows, they don’t give a damn about the people who live near the work zone, whose sleep and lives are disrupted.

Second, they claim to be fiscally responsible, yet chose to build the largest and most expensive version of the interchange options. If they were truly being fiscally responsible, they would not have built the intersection at all, but invested in public transit or, as Trevor Hancock suggested last week, telecommute centres (“Build telecommute centres, not interchanges,” column, Nov. 15).

On top of all this, they are building an unnecessary berm that intrudes even farther into Cuthbert Holmes Park and on the Colquitz River, mainly, it seems, as a way of getting rid of fill. In fact, their contractors have created a dangerous situation for people in the park. Just take a look at the homeless camps that are a couple of feet from the so-called silt fence. This camp has been there for years. As usual, we do not see project management looking beyond the money and certainly not to the benefit of people and our transportation systems.

The new B.C. government needs to take a hard look at this ministry, and create instead a transport policy and ministry more suited to the 21st century.

Rob Wickson Victoria